[sparrowInHand]

Patterns are something totally overrepresented in developer knowledge.

They would be way be best described with: "similar solutions that people came up under extraordinary, rare circumstances and pressure". Usefull - if and only if you get into a project/warstorie similar to the one that pattern re-emerged. Not usefull if added on top of some pattern bloatfloater that can barely move anymore.

[withinboredom]

Patterns and their names are useful to communicate to other developers wtf you want to do. For example, "we can do a bit of flyweight with an FSM on this bit here to get this feature working".

This is literally the only time I've used patterns in my entire career: to communicate ideas on how to solve problems. I don't think I've ever even once implemented a pure "by the book" pattern though.